Mind the gap

Forget all the talk about health and wealth inequalities. At the basis of the north-south divide is something quite simple and it is this: in the north people talk to each other, in the south we do not.

This rule remains in place for many good reasons of taste and propriety. But chiefly it is there because, as everyone knows, if you engage with another human being you’ve just come across in a street in London he will turn out to be Mad Jack ‘The Madman’ McMad from the secure wing of the nearest insane asylum.

My friend Janet from Manchester, however, refuses to acknowledge this rule and, whenever she visits, remains resolutely wedded to her deeply alarming habit of holding conversations with strangers. She has been staying with me for a week now and I can safely say I have been forced to make more random contact with other human beings than I have previously made in my entire life.